NPR Visual Newscast – Vincent M. Farquharson

Interaction Design, UX Research, UX Strategy, Voice-UI Design

Objective

NPR partnered with Amazon to develop an extension of the Hourly Newscast for delivery to multimodal voice-primary devices. NPR wanted a visual experience that differentiated its brand from TV’s “talking head” news yet provided an authentic extension of its audio-first traditional newscast.

Planning & Discovery

NPR assembled a cross-divisional team including members from several editorial desks, digital product development, distribution, digital production, and sponsorship teams. I led the discovery and documentation efforts to understand the production workflow undergoing a process automation upgrade to enable editorial to produce this new form of content.

User Research

With user testing and feedback gathered from NPR’s user community, I uncovered insights into user behaviors and motivations. I then created a set of assumptions to check in subsequent testing. User testing also informed the organization about user reception of this new type of product.

UX Strategy & Vision

I created wireframes and prototypes to share the vision, design principles and strategy. I evangelized user goals and balanced them with business goals to aid decision making.

Interaction Design

I created a new design framework and patterns for the various and evolving family of multimodal devices. My focus was on informing the user while providing meaningful visual context. I also produced the early wireframes and concepts that informed the final designs.